1984: 50 Works for 50 Years

Josephine Jumping Eagle was fourteen years old when Father Eugene Buechel photographed her in a Christenson Aeronautical Services plane. She lived on Pine Ridge Reservation, where her father Oliver was Police Chief. According to family history, around the time this photograph was taken, Josephine contracted tuberculosis and nearly died in an Iowa sanitorium though she recovered, married Charles Jacobs in the 1930s and died in 1993.

Father Eugene Buechel left over 2,300 documented negatives and prints of the Rosebud and Pine Ridge people to St. Francis Mission. The images in the South Dakota Art Museum collection were printed from this collection of negatives by David Wing of San Diego, CA, in 1974. They were given to the museum in 1984 by St. Francis Mission in memory of Les Hegeland (1919 – 1982), former editor of the Yankton Press and Dakotan, a friend of the Mission and a trustee of the museum.

Learn more about Eugene Buechel and the images in our collection.

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